Monthly Archives: July 2011

Bridesmaids – Movie Review

Where do I start?

Over 90% in positive reviews according to Rotten Tomatoes, written by those responsible for the hilarious Saturday Night Live skits and brought to the screen by those that gave us Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin. Mix these together and you get a pretty high expectation level for Bridesmaids. Some had even called it the comedy of the year, a possible “Hangover”-esque comedy with women in power.

I don’t want to sound anti-feminist but Bridesmaids fails miserably.

Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Liliane (Maya Rudolph) have been best friends since they were little girls. When Liliane gets engaged, she chooses Annie to be her maid of honor. And then they meet the other bridesmaids: a neurotic woman named Helen (Rose Byrn), a newlywed Becca (Ellie Kemper), a tomboy-ish Megan (Melissa McCarthy) and a frustrated mother and wife named Rita (Wendy McLendon-Covey).

Naturally, the bridesmaids won’t get along well as conflict between Helen, who wants to be Liliane’s best friend, and Annie soon arises. And this is the movie’s catalyst (or lack thereof): how the characters interact.

Starting off with a sex scene and going into the monotonous life of a woman and her best friend, the movie sets itself as a chick-flick from the get-go. And it doesn’t really try to stray from that connotation until about the 45th minute. And that’s a lot of baggage for a movie to try to get rid off with one scene that involves a dress fitting gone seriously wrong after some Brazilian food poisoning.

Yes, you will laugh your ass off at that scene and start hoping that the movie has picked up but you will be severely disappointed.

And what do you know, single Annie soon enough meets her own prince charming in the form of a police officer who pulls her over because he thought she was driving under the influence of alcohol. Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) soon embarks on a troubled relationship with Annie that doesn’t really unfold and is left as a side story more in the realms of cliche than of a true relationship.

Bridesmaids is a terribly slow movie as well. The plot lingers on so many irrelevant points that it doesn’t feel like moving at all. And mind you, I had no idea this was a two hour movie. It’s almost longer than Harry Potter. No comedy is supposed to take this long to unfold, especially one with so little jokes and so many useless dialogue.

The acting in Bridesmaids is pretentious as well. Not only is it agonizing to watch at times, but it’s also as rickety as the joints of a creaky table. Some have called Kristen Wiig’s performance a breakthrough. Excuse me, but have we watched the same movie? She’s not even the character that delivers the good jokes in the movie, it’s tomboy-ish Megan. And Helen, the movie’s “villain” is so marinated in everything cliche about the perfectionist wedding planner than seeing her on screen initiates your gag reflex.

Let me put it this way, Bridesmaids was so bad that a friend who watched the movie with me and who hates anything in the fantasy genre wished she had watched Harry Potter instead. And I was mortified that I had actually suggested we’d watch such a movie. I’m pretty sure a third screening of Harry would have been much more enjoyable than seeing a bunch of women make a joke of themselves by vomiting, cracking jokes about blowjobs, diarrhea and getting wasted on airplanes.

Let me try to grade this. 3/10

Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Sex Scene Video Leaked

Since I have a twihard following, I figured they’d be interested in seeing this. Everyone else, don’t mind this post.

After pictures from Breaking Dawn’s Sex Scene (and only scene I’m interested in watching for that matter) leaked back in April, a video of a few seconds from that scene has leaked today as well.

I’m beginning to believe these are intentional leaks to build the hype for the movie as viewers are probably waiting the most to see Bella and Edward hit it off.

You can see the video here.

[EDIT] I was asked to remove the pictures.


Jason DeCaires Taylor’s Spectacular Underwater Sculptures

Jason deCaires Taylor is an English artist known for contemporary works of art where he builds life-size sculptures of people and submerges them in water.

In time, those sculptures become part of the natural landscape, forming artificial reefs full of marine life.

His works include:

Grace Reef, Moilinere Bay Sculpture Park , Grenada 2006

Vicissitudes, Moilinere Bay Sculpture Park, Grenada 2006

The Lost Correspondent, Moilinere Bay Sculpture Park, Grenada 2006

The unstill Life, Moilinere Bay Sculpture Park, Grenada 2006.

Alluvia, The Stour River, Canterbury, Kent April 2008.

Inverted Solitude The National Diving and Activities Centre, Chepstow, commission in April 2008 for Smart Art Television

The Un-still Life II a land-based commission, hosted by the Municipality of Paliani Stone Symposium in Crete, Greece, August 2008.

Hombre en llamas (Man on Fire), MUSA, Cancun, November 2009

La Jardinera de la Esperanza (The Gardener of Hope), MUSA, Cancun, November 2009

El colecionista de los sueños (The Dream Collector), MUSA, Cancun, November 2009

La Evolución Silenciosa (The Silent Evolution), MUSA, Cancun, November, 2011.

You can find explanations of these works of art on his website.

Meanwhile, behold the gorgeous pictures as shared with me by my good friend Agnes Semaan through this website:


Mac OS X Lion – Overview

Mac OS X Lion has just been released and these are my thoughts of the new Mac operating system that I’ve been using for a couple of weeks now.

Installing Lion is a very easy task. You just run the installer that you download, input your administrator password and the OS automatically installs. Of course, it’s always advisable to back up your data beforehand since you never know what might go wrong but most probably nothing will.

Once the installation is done, you’ll be taken to a newly designed welcome screen where you enter your password and access your desktop.

The first thing Lion welcomes you with is an introduction its new way of scrolling. However, Apple has decided to set the scrolling to “natural,” which, like the iPad, is actually the reverse of what you’re used to: scrolling up takes you down and vice versa. However, unlike the iPad, your Mac does not have a touch screen making the scrolling as set by Apple not “natural” at all. So I went to system preferences and changed it.

OS X Lion boasts many addition and tweaks that are truly great. But I think there are five which can be considered as the highlight of this update: Resume, Mission Control, Airdrop, Full Screen and Launchpad.

1 – Resume:

Have you ever shut down your laptop and regretted it because you didn’t have something saved? Well, with OS X Lion, you don’t need to worry about that anymore. Whenever you turn on your mac after shutting it down, you will be presented with the exact same state you left your mac in prior to shut down. Did you have iTunes, Twitter, Firefox and iPhoto running? They’d still be running and open to the tabs you were browsing, the tweets you were seeing and the songs you were selecting.

I’m the type of people who don’t like to turn off their laptops simply because I find the time it takes for them to boot and start launching my apps too long. With OS X Lion, I boot my Macbook Pro and before I know it, it’s as if I never turned it off. That is truly this update’s highlight. Sure, it’s not the most dazzling addition but in the long run, it’s the most useful one.

You can opt out of it before shutting down. But why would you?

2 – Mission Control:

The negative thing about mission control is that it takes time to get accustomed with the new finger gestures. I had my mac set up for four-finger gestures: up removed all windows from my desktop, down took me to expose. With OS X Lion, the four-finger gestures are removed entirely and replaced with three-finger gestures.

Going up with three fingers + thumb launches Mission Control.

Don’t mind my Harry Potter wallpaper. The movie is simply epic after all.

What Mission Control does is show you all of the windows and apps you’re working with, allowing you to organize them.

You can drag for example your internet browser and make a new desktop out of it.

This new desktop can now be accessed via a two-finger swipe to the left (or right, depending on where you are).

Mission Control is highly useful when you want to relieve yourself of clutter. Whenever you find yourself overwhelmed with windows, simply drag a few of them into new desktops and go to those desktops to finish your work. When you’re done, hover your cursor over the new desktops and you’ll be able to close them.

3 – Airdrop:

Ever wanted to share something with someone and you were out of a flash drive or any way to send it over to them? Well, if you’re on the same Wi-Fi network, OS X Lion has the solution in the form of Airdrop.

Found in all the windows of “Finder” on the side, airdrop allows you to share that file with any Mac in the vicinity.

4 – Full Screen:

This update also boasts the ability to go full screen in many apps: iTunes, iPhoto, Garageband, etc…. Whenever you go full screen with an app, you can use a three-finger scroll sideways to switch between all full-screen apps running. I have yet to fully use this capacity, simply because I don’t feel like it’s really needed. What’s the point of looking at iTunes (or any other app) full screen?

Moreover, a simple click on the escape button wouldn’t take you out of full screen mode. You have to hover your mouse to the top of the page in order for a blue box with two reduction arrows to appear. Clicking on that takes you back to normal screen mode.

Interestingly, going full screen in Quicktime automatically transfers you to a new desktop so you can keep the movie you’re watching at full screen when you need to pause it to work with other things. However, I still don’t get how to make Quicktime work as my media player after connecting my Macbook Pro via HDMI to my TV so I’ve resorted to VLC instead.

5 – Launchpad:

Out of the new additions I have chosen to discuss in this overview, I’m the most disappointed by Launchpad. Why? Because it’s practically useless. A three-finger squeeze launches launchpad from which you can launch any app.

As you can see, it has been built in a way very similar to how apps are presented on an iPad’s screen. Even folders are the same. But I’m used to launching an app simply by clicking on my “Applications” folder in the dock and clicking for the app. With Launchpad, it’s one extra step for me to do that.

Installing any app will from the Mac App Store will appear as a “download bar” underneath the Launchpad icon, similar to what happens on an iOS device.

Launchpad is basically the most obvious of bringing iOS to OS X. But it pales in comparison to the other additions in OS X Lion.

OS X Lion has many other tweaks that are not discussed here. Preview has its interface changed, as well as the Mail app, which now allows threaded conversations as well as flagging emails in various degrees of importance. You can no longer change the size of icons and folders automatically rearrange to limit empty spaces between contents.

Is OS X Lion a must-have update? I’m inclined to say it’s no. But I personally advise everyone to update because soon enough Apple will start to iron out the kinks. OS X is a very, very strong operating system that will stay a market leader for long. Windows has a lot of catching up to do and even though OS X Lion is not a giant leap forward, it opened up even more grounds on Windows. After all, by combining elements from Mac OS X with iOS, although far from perfect, has taken the user’s mac experience to a whole new level. Mac OS X Lion gives you the feeling that you are working with a futuristic device, even though for example my Macbook Pro is almost 2 years old.

Apple is known not to release a product unless they’re sure it’s the best they can offer at the moment. Sure, they’ve had missteps. But OS X Lion is not one of them. And for $29.99 and the ability to install it on any mac computer you own, it sure is a bargain. So should you buy it? Hell yes. It offers enough for $29.99 to make the must-have update question I asked earlier somewhat irrelevant.

The July 2006 Lebanon/Israel War: My Story

This is a guest post by my good friend Hala Hassan.

Hear it from those who were there.

A neighboring country at war, you sympathize.

Innocent civilians torn into pieces under the wreckage of their houses, you shed a couple of tears.

Frightened children and sick elderly begging for international intervention, you pray deaf ears listen somehow.

But what if you were that citizen in that country, held up in your house, scared like you’ve never been, reciting every single prayer that ever crossed your mind for those bombshells to stop and those warplanes hovering in the sky to go away…

Yes, it’s been 5 years since “July war”, “the 33 days war”, “the 6th Lebanese/Israeli war” or whatever they want to call it. But for that traumatized girl, it still feels like yesterday…

To survive a war is one supposedly satisfying ending. Not to have lost a family member is considered a blessing. But for a 17 year old, survival was not enough to overcome such an altering experience: A slamming door, a blowing wind, even fireworks… any sound still triggers her fearful memories and is capable of causing her a panic attack.

She still remembers each day and date in the intricate details of their events. She still remembers that Wednesday July 12th when her father called asking her not to be alarmed if she hears distant explosions. She remembers how he came back that afternoon ‘whistling’ trying to make her and her sisters feel like everything was just fine. She remembers how she had to share a bed with her older sister that night, freezing at instances and suffocating at others out of fear.  The warplanes had started violating her sky that day. They wouldn’t leave till late August.

She still remembers the following two days she spent in the supposedly “safest room” of the house – back then “safe” meant having a double ceiling, no glass windows and least furniture – and how she kept on squeezing her mom’s hand relentlessly all night like a 2 year old.

She still remembers the voice that emanated from the radio, her only way of communication with the world, asking her and other Southern residents to leave their villages. Or else. That radio also conveyed news about those innocent civilians, who got betrayed by their naïve expectations, upon leaving their houses thinking that a white flag would save them from being savagely murdered.

She still remembers that shelter in her grandparents’ house: a tight narrow tunnel lacking light and at some points oxygen in which she sought mistaken safety with other family members and neighbors. She still remembers the smell of those sweaty fearful souls and the cries of those frightened hungry kids.

She still remembers July 19th when her peaceful village was attacked by deadly showers of cluster bombs, those internationally banned bombs that kept on dropping like rain for hours during which she felt the epitome of fear, leaving behind a dead woman and many serious injuries. She still remembers that awful silence following the disaster, a silence which was not broken until a few of hours later by the siren of an ambulance that waited a long time to be given permission to come for rescue.

She still remembers July 21st when a vehicle of the Lebanese army was bombarded in her village leaving behind severely burnt soldiers, even though the army was left outside the equation back then.

She still remembers her 8-year-old sister hugging her physician father as he was leaving them to help in rescue efforts, begging him not to leave as everyone watched the scene and wept.

That day was her last in her beloved village because the citizens whose cars “survived” the attacks decided to leave. Food, water and medication had become scarce. And most importantly it had become obvious to them that they were targeted to be killed.

That day she saw her father covering their car with a big white piece of fabric. She saw frightened people struggling for seats in the leaving cars, which got stuffed with traumatized flesh and blood seeking refuge…. The last face she saw was that of her grandfather at the house gate. He refused to leave because for him life does not exist beyond that gate.

She still remembers that cursed journey to the Bekaa, every moment she spent looking through her window praying for that Apache not to show up in the sky and turn her and her family into pieces. She still remembers those endless days she spent crying and thinking of the life she left behind, wondering if she’ll ever be back.

Who said time makes people forget their previous fears and overcome past sufferings? Well, here is something that girl has come to learn: child or elderly, woman or man, illiterate or educated, everyone who survived that war has suffered and still is. They are all hidden victims that no one ever bothered to soothe their psychological needs and problems.

That 17 year old is turning 22 soon. She is a graduate of the American University of Beirut and planning a medical degree, which makes her someone who supposedly has been provided with the best education and environment to overcome whatever distress she has been through. And yet that girl is still held up in that summer. As a friend of hers always suggests, therapy might be the best solution for her condition. Therapy might put an end to the nightmares. It might alleviate the effects of the past pain… but the scar will always remain, carved with blood and tears in her memory.

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. For that girl, this saying has become a belief. 4 days after the battles stopped, there she was, back in her village along with most of those who left, challenging all the difficulties and threats. Everyone had one common goal: rebuild the destruction, heal the wounds and restore life in their beloved South. After all, it’s Lebanese determination that was being tested. Who is better at acing such a test than those who have endured vicious wars throughout the years, one after the other? History will probably keep on telling their stories of glory and courage until the end of days.